Among the Gikuyu, mutura was not the only type of ndundiro, or sausage. The community also had ngerima, whose only dissimilarity with mutura was that one was made from the intestines while the other was made from the omasum. Ngerima, shaped like an oval ball, was also known as “thenga twarie,” which in the Kikuyu language means “Go away we want to talk privately.” It was called this because the old men of the village, in a bid to make sure that the glories of eating it remained theirs, would tell their wives and children to go away because they wanted to talk privately. Then, the rest of the intestines, the ones that hadn’t been used up when making the mutura, were roasted plain without anything stuffed inside them; this was known as mara. Sometimes, one eats mutura along with kachumbari, a salad made from tomatoes, onions, chiles, and parsley, and sometimes not. But one will always ask for the mutura bit by bit.
